Time zone and unit converters, snapshot and more in Opera 48 beta

We hope that your summer has been just as splendid as ours. While it’s not officially the end of summer, you may be feeling cooler temperatures (or, if you reside in the Southern Hemisphere, a welcoming warmth), marking a time of transition from one season to another.

To help prepare for the oncoming autumn months, we’ve prepared and enhanced some useful tools and features for you as Opera 48 advances into the beta stage. The highlights are our new converting tools for units of measurement – perfect for, such as for Celsius and Fahrenheit conversions, anticipating autumn and winter travels – and time zones, as well as our snapshot tool.

Today’s beta release also has support for importing bookmarks from Edge and Yandex, improvements for the tabs bar, the ability to remove history suggestions in the address bar, a reorganized O-Menu and sharpened images.Conversions galore – Convert units of measurement, time zones and currency

Opera’s currency converter was introduced in the 42nd instalment of the browser. Beginning in Opera 47 developer and continuing now in 48 beta, the converter options have expanded to include units of measurement and time zones. Akin to the search pop up tool, these converters are designed to save users the extra steps of opening a separate tab for conducting a new inquiry.

Today’s initial Opera 48 beta build comes stacked with 14 unit of measurements and 16 time zones ready for your conversion whims. A simple highlight of the value will convert the value from metric to its imperial equivalent, or vice-versa. A simple highlight of a measurement value will convert the value from metric to its imperial equivalent, or vice-versa. With the time zone converter, highlighting a faraway time zone will adjust it to your local time (or your system’s operating time zone).

Further below in this blog are lists of all the convertible units and time zones available in Opera beta, along with a refresher on the 32 available currencies ready to be converted. Go ahead and test the converters with the provided examples. Don’t worry about having to precisely highlight the value; the search pop up converters can recognize a convertible value within a wider highlighted field.

Easy copy of converted values and fraction recognizability

You can easily copy the converted value to your clipboard for later use. Hover your mouse of the conversion to reveal a second “Copy” button, as demonstrated in the screenshot below, and click it to keep it in your clipboard.

Opera 48 beta makes this tool more precise with support for converting fractions. The unit converter can now recognise an array of Unicode subscript and superscript forms, such ½ ft, 1⁄4 mi or even ³⁄₄₇ gal.

Units – As you prepare for future holiday travels or the amount of snow to expect this winter, Opera 48 features 14 unit converters to help you make sense of funny measurements:

1.

lb ⇄ kg

205lbs

45kg

2.

°F ⇄ °C

39°C

-12°F

3.

oz ⇄ g

128 oz

20g

4.

mph ⇄ km/h

80mph

140km/h

5.

mpg ⇄ l/100km

25.7mpg

94l/100km

6.

gal ⇄ l

2 ³⁄₄₇ gal

10.3 l

7.

qt ⇄ l

4 qt

50 l

8.

fl ⇄ ml

405.75fl

2½ml

9.

mi ⇄ km

58.3mi

74.8km

10.

yd ⇄ m

239 yd

100m

11.

ft ⇄ m

6½ft, 6′

200m

12.

in ⇄ cm

72in, 72″

72cm

13.

kW ⇄ hp

700kW

400hp

14.

lb ft ⇄ Nm

1,250lb ft

345.55 Nm

Time zones – Our ever-connecting world allows us to network with people and events all across the globe. This can mean, however, that a faraway time zone will confuse you. It’s never good to be late for an online conference call!

One fix made during the developer phase was the time converter will now work if an extraneous dot or comma is found in the highlighted field. Also, should a date (DD-MM-YYYY or MM-DD-YYYY) be highlighted with a time, it will be reproduced in the conversion as well.

1.

PST / PDT: Pacific Standard / Daylight Time

4:00 PST

2.

MST / MDT: Mountain Standard / Daylight Time

7:00pm MDT

3.

CST / CDT: Central Standard / Daylight Time

2:37am CST

4.

EST / EDT: Eastern Standard / Daylight Time

20:30 EDT

5.

AST / ADT: Atlantic Standard Time / Daylight Time

11:35AM AST

6.

NST / NDT: Newfoundland Standard Time / Daylight Time

3:55 NST

7.

GMT: Greenwich Mean Time

8:00 GMT

8.

BST: British Summer Time

12:12 BST

9.

MET: Middle Europe Time

9:14 MET

10.

CET / CEST: Central Europe Time / Daylight (Summer) Time

16:33 CEST

11.

EET / EEST: Eastern Europe Time / Daylight (Summer) Time

16:33 EEST

12.

WET / WEST: Western Europe Time / Daylight (Summer) Time

16:33 WET

13.

JST: Japan Standard Time

23:55 JST

14.

KST: Korean Standard Time

1:12 KST

15.

IST: Indian Standard Time

0:00 IST

16.

MSK: Moscow Standard Time

5:22PM MSK

Your local time is determined by your system’s time settings.

Currencies – Our bundle of converters began with foreign currencies back in Opera 42. Since then, we’ve made some important improvements. Each currency listed below will include its compatible symbol and code which will be recognized for conversion.

Currency conversion is based on the reference rates reported by the European Central Bank (“ECB”) using EURO as its base currency. You can learn more about the ECB’s policy and exchange rates here.

Snapshot

We are excited to implement a snapshot tool in Opera 48 beta. Inspired by our Opera Neon screenshot tool, you can initiate the beta snapshot tool either by clicking the camera icon in the sidebar or by a keyboard shortcut (Ctrl + Shift + 5 or ⌘ + ⇧ + 5).

After firing up snapshot, an adjustable frame will pop onto your screen, allowing you to frame exactly what you want to capture. You can also do a quick ‘Capture full screen’ to snap what you see on your monitor.

Once you’ve taken the snapshot, you have the choice of saving the it to your clipboard to quickly paste elsewhere or directly into your system’s hard drive.

Importing from Yandex and Edge

If you’re reading this beta release article via Yandex or Edge, you can now move your bookmarks and contents to Opera. The two browsers have been added to our checklist of supported browsers and their bookmarks and other content. Here is a complete list of where you can import your data from:

Google Chrome

Firefox

Microsoft Edge

Microsoft Internet Explorer

Safari

Yandex

Bookmarks from an HTML file

Increased number of recently closed tabs

In the tabs menu, found to the far right of the combined search and address bar, the number of recently closed tabs has expanded from 10 to 32. During your browsing session, any tab that you close will be stored in this panel. The recently closed tabs list is a handy and abbreviated shortcut to your history page, allowing you to quickly recall a closed tab. Plus, all tabs queued up in the recently closed tabs panel will be saved over to your next browsing session.

Another quick way to open your most recently closed tab is to right-click any active tab and select “Reopen Last Closed Tab.” This page will resurrect in a new tab.

Removal of history suggestions

Today’s beta release makes it much easier to remove history items suggested in the combined search and address bar. Whether that’s a mistyped search or a page you want to forget about, you can get rid of it with just one click.

Starting for Windows and Linux, deletable search or page URLs will have an ‘X’ on the far right end of the entry in the combined search and address bar dropdown. Previously, you had to dig into your history log to delete it.Note: Removal of history suggestions is available on Windows and Linux.

Reorganized O-Menu

The O-Menu has been cleaned up with more logical and better organized sections. For instance, all bookmark-related actions such as importing and exporting can be found in the bookmarks submenu. In addition to these changes, we made coming back to recently closed tabs and windows much easier as they are listed in the O-Menu.

Sharpening the view

Today’s beta build has sharpened toolbar icons for Windows and better visibility for dark icons in the bookmark and extensions bars while in dark theme. Colors on the user interface are more uniform across all platforms.

Two new buttons have been added. A “Resume” button is shown in your downloads page when a download was interrupted by closing the browser, and a refresh button for errors in the sidebar messengers is present. Several icons and notifications, especially in HiDPI modes, have been sharpened as well (loading icons, pop up and content blocked notifications and updated plus icon in toolbar).

Other highlights and fixes

Some important things we want to highlight include fixes for seeking and volume control on Vimeo, CPU usage on Google and Yandex maps if hardware acceleration is disabled and crashes relating to bookmarks.